OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
PointMT: Efficient Point Cloud Analysis with Hybrid MLP-Transformer Architecture
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

In recent years, point cloud analysis methods based on the Transformer architecture have made significant progress, particularly in the context of multimedia applications such as 3D modeling, virtual reality, and autonomous systems. However, the high computational resource demands of the Transformer architecture hinder its scalability, real-time processing capabilities, and deployment on mobile devices and other platforms with limited computational resources. This limitation remains a significant obstacle to its practical application in scenarios requiring on-device intelligence and multimedia processing. To address this challenge, we propose an efficient point cloud analysis architecture, \textbf{Point} \textbf{M}LP-\textbf{T}ransformer (PointMT). This study tackles the quadratic complexity of the self-attention mechanism by introducing a linear complexity local attention mechanism for effective feature aggregation. Additionally, to counter the Transformer's focus on token differences while neglecting channel differences, we introduce a parameter-free channel temperature adaptation mechanism that adaptively adjusts the attention weight distribution in each channel, enhancing the precision of feature aggregation. To improve the Transformer's slow convergence speed due to the limited scale of point cloud datasets, we propose an MLP-Transformer hybrid module, which significantly enhances the model's convergence speed. Furthermore, to boost the feature representation capability of point tokens, we refine the classification head, enabling point tokens to directly participate in prediction. Experimental results on multiple evaluation benchmarks demonstrate that PointMT achieves performance comparable to state-of-the-art methods while maintaining an optimal balance between performance and accuracy.
Residual-INR: Communication Efficient On-Device Learning Using Implicit Neural Representation
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Edge computing is a distributed computing paradigm that collects and processes data at or near the source of data generation. The on-device learning at edge relies on device-to-device wireless communication to facilitate real-time data sharing and collaborative decision-making among multiple devices. This significantly improves the adaptability of the edge computing system to the changing environments. However, as the scale of the edge computing system is getting larger, communication among devices is becoming the bottleneck because of the limited bandwidth of wireless communication leads to large data transfer latency. To reduce the amount of device-to-device data transmission and accelerate on-device learning, in this paper, we propose Residual-INR, a fog computing-based communication-efficient on-device learning framework by utilizing implicit neural representation (INR) to compress images/videos into neural network weights. Residual-INR enhances data transfer efficiency by collecting JPEG images from edge devices, compressing them into INR format at the fog node, and redistributing them for on-device learning. By using a smaller INR for full image encoding and a separate object INR for high-quality object region reconstruction through residual encoding, our technique can reduce the encoding redundancy while maintaining the object quality. Residual-INR is a promising solution for edge on-device learning because it reduces data transmission by up to 5.16 x across a network of 10 edge devices. It also facilitates CPU-free accelerated on-device learning, achieving up to 2.9 x speedup without sacrificing accuracy. Our code is available at: https://github.com/sharc-lab/Residual-INR.
Forecasting Day-Ahead Electricity Prices in the Integrated Single Electricity Market: Addressing Volatility with Comparative Machine Learning Methods
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

This paper undertakes a comprehensive investigation of electricity price forecasting methods, focused on the Irish Integrated Single Electricity Market, particularly on changes during recent periods of high volatility. The primary objective of this research is to evaluate and compare the performance of various forecasting models, ranging from traditional machine learning models to more complex neural networks, as well as the impact of different lengths of training periods. The performance metrics, mean absolute error, root mean square error, and relative mean absolute error, are utilized to assess and compare the accuracy of each model. A comprehensive set of input features was investigated and selected from data recorded between October 2018 and September 2022. The paper demonstrates that the daily EU Natural Gas price is a more useful feature for electricity price forecasting in Ireland than the daily Henry Hub Natural Gas price. This study also shows that the correlation of features to the day-ahead market price has changed in recent years. The price of natural gas on the day and the amount of wind energy on the grid that hour are significantly more important than any other features. More specifically speaking, the input fuel for electricity has become a more important driver of the price of it, than the total generation or demand. In addition, it can be seen that System Non-Synchronous Penetration (SNSP) is highly correlated with the day-ahead market price, and that renewables are pushing down the price of electricity.
Federated Smoothing Proximal Gradient for Quantile Regression with Non-Convex Penalties
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Distributed sensors in the internet-of-things (IoT) generate vast amounts of sparse data. Analyzing this high-dimensional data and identifying relevant predictors pose substantial challenges, especially when data is preferred to remain on the device where it was collected for reasons such as data integrity, communication bandwidth, and privacy. This paper introduces a federated quantile regression algorithm to address these challenges. Quantile regression provides a more comprehensive view of the relationship between variables than mean regression models. However, traditional approaches face difficulties when dealing with nonconvex sparse penalties and the inherent non-smoothness of the loss function. For this purpose, we propose a federated smoothing proximal gradient (FSPG) algorithm that integrates a smoothing mechanism with the proximal gradient framework, thereby enhancing both precision and computational speed. This integration adeptly handles optimization over a network of devices, each holding local data samples, making it particularly effective in federated learning scenarios. The FSPG algorithm ensures steady progress and reliable convergence in each iteration by maintaining or reducing the value of the objective function. By leveraging nonconvex penalties, such as the minimax concave penalty (MCP) and smoothly clipped absolute deviation (SCAD), the proposed method can identify and preserve key predictors within sparse models. Comprehensive simulations validate the robust theoretical foundations of the proposed algorithm and demonstrate improved estimation precision and reliable convergence.
Swarm-Net: Firmware Attestation in IoT Swarms using Graph Neural Networks and Volatile Memory
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2024
Year: 2024

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of billions of interconnected, primarily low-end embedded devices. Despite large-scale deployment, studies have highlighted critical security concerns in IoT networks, many of which stem from firmware-related issues. Furthermore, IoT swarms have become more prevalent in industries, smart homes, and agricultural applications, among others. Malicious activity on one node in a swarm can propagate to larger network sections. Although several Remote Attestation (RA) techniques have been proposed, they are limited by their latency, availability, complexity, hardware assumptions, and uncertain access to firmware copies under Intellectual Property (IP) rights. We present Swarm-Net, a novel swarm attestation technique that exploits the inherent, interconnected, graph-like structure of IoT networks along with the runtime information stored in the Static Random Access Memory (SRAM) using Graph Neural Networks (GNN) to detect malicious firmware and its downstream effects. We also present the first datasets on SRAM-based swarm attestation encompassing different types of firmware and edge relationships. In addition, a secure swarm attestation protocol is presented. Swarm-Net is not only computationally lightweight but also does not require a copy of the firmware. It achieves a 99.96% attestation rate on authentic firmware, 100% detection rate on anomalous firmware, and 99% detection rate on propagated anomalies, at a communication overhead and inference latency of ~1 second and ~10^{-5} seconds (on a laptop CPU), respectively. In addition to the collected datasets, Swarm-Net's effectiveness is evaluated on simulated trace replay, random trace perturbation, and dropped attestation responses, showing robustness against such threats. Lastly, we compare Swarm-Net with past works and present a security analysis.
Movable Antenna Enhanced AF Relaying: Two-Stage Antenna Position Optimization
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2024
Year: 2024

The movable antenna (MA) technology has attracted increasing attention in wireless communications due to its capability for flexibly adjusting the positions of multiple antennas in a local region to reconfigure channel conditions. In this paper, we investigate its application in an amplify-and-forward (AF) relay system, where a multi-MA AF relay is deployed to assist in the wireless communications from a source to a destination. In particular, we aim to maximize the achievable rate at the destination, by jointly optimizing the AF weight matrix at the relay and its MAs' positions in two stages for receiving the signal from the source and transmitting its amplified version to the destination, respectively. However, compared to the existing one-stage antenna position optimization, the two-stage position optimization is more challenging due to its intricate coupling in the achievable rate at the destination. To tackle this challenge, we decompose the considered problem into several subproblems by invoking the alternating optimization (AO) and solve them by using the semidefinite programming and the gradient ascent. Numerical results demonstrate the superiority of our proposed system over the conventional relaying system with fixed-position antennas (FPAs) and also drive essential insights.
Unlocking the Power of Numbers: Log Compression via Numeric Token Parsing
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2024
Year: 2024

Parser-based log compressors have been widely explored in recent years because the explosive growth of log volumes makes the compression performance of general-purpose compressors unsatisfactory. These parser-based compressors preprocess logs by grouping the logs based on the parsing result and then feed the preprocessed files into a general-purpose compressor. However, parser-based compressors have their limitations. First, the goals of parsing and compression are misaligned, so the inherent characteristics of logs were not fully utilized. In addition, the performance of parser-based compressors depends on the sample logs and thus it is very unstable. Moreover, parser-based compressors often incur a long processing time. To address these limitations, we propose Denum, a simple, general log compressor with high compression ratio and speed. The core insight is that a majority of the tokens in logs are numeric tokens (i.e. pure numbers, tokens with only numbers and special characters, and numeric variables) and effective compression of them is critical for log compression. Specifically, Denum contains a Numeric Token Parsing module, which extracts all numeric tokens and applies tailored processing methods (e.g. store the differences of incremental numbers like timestamps), and a String Processing module, which processes the remaining log content without numbers. The processed files of the two modules are then fed as input to a general-purpose compressor and it outputs the final compression results. Denum has been evaluated on 16 log datasets and it achieves an 8.7%-434.7% higher average compression ratio and 2.6x-37.7x faster average compression speed (i.e. 26.2MB/S) compared to the baselines. Moreover, integrating Denum's Numeric Token Parsing into existing log compressors can provide an 11.8% improvement in their average compression ratio and achieve 37% faster average compression speed.
A robust baro-radar-inertial odometry m-estimator for multicopter navigation in cities and forests
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2024
Year: 2024

Search and rescue operations require mobile robots to navigate unstructured indoor and outdoor environments. In particular, actively stabilized multirotor drones need precise movement data to balance and avoid obstacles. Combining radial velocities from on-chip radar with MEMS inertial sensing has proven to provide robust, lightweight, and consistent state estimation, even in visually or geometrically degraded environments. Statistical tests robustify these estimators against radar outliers. However, available work with binary outlier filters lacks adaptability to various hardware setups and environments. Other work has predominantly been tested in handheld static environments or automotive contexts. This work introduces a robust baro-radar-inertial odometry (BRIO) m-estimator for quadcopter flights in typical GNSS-denied scenarios. Extensive real-world closed-loop flights in cities and forests demonstrate robustness to moving objects and ghost targets, maintaining a consistent performance with 0.5 % to 3.2 % drift per distance traveled. Benchmarks on public datasets validate the system's generalizability. The code, dataset, and video are available at https://github.com/ethz-asl/rio.
A Meta-Engine Framework for Interleaved Task and Motion Planning using Topological Refinements
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2024
Year: 2024

Task And Motion Planning (TAMP) is the problem of finding a solution to an automated planning problem that includes discrete actions executable by low-level continuous motions. This field is gaining increasing interest within the robotics community, as it significantly enhances robot's autonomy in real-world applications. Many solutions and formulations exist, but no clear standard representation has emerged. In this paper, we propose a general and open-source framework for modeling and benchmarking TAMP problems. Moreover, we introduce an innovative meta-technique to solve TAMP problems involving moving agents and multiple task-state-dependent obstacles. This approach enables using any off-the-shelf task planner and motion planner while leveraging a geometric analysis of the motion planner's search space to prune the task planner's exploration, enhancing its efficiency. We also show how to specialize this meta-engine for the case of an incremental SMT-based planner. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach across benchmark problems of increasing complexity, where robots must navigate environments with movable obstacles. Finally, we integrate state-of-the-art TAMP algorithms into our framework and compare their performance with our achievements.
Real-Time Drowsiness Detection Using Eye Aspect Ratio and Facial Landmark Detection
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Drowsiness detection is essential for improving safety in areas such as transportation and workplace health. This study presents a real-time system designed to detect drowsiness using the Eye Aspect Ratio (EAR) and facial landmark detection techniques. The system leverages Dlibs pre-trained shape predictor model to accurately detect and monitor 68 facial landmarks, which are used to compute the EAR. By establishing a threshold for the EAR, the system identifies when eyes are closed, indicating potential drowsiness. The process involves capturing a live video stream, detecting faces in each frame, extracting eye landmarks, and calculating the EAR to assess alertness. Our experiments show that the system reliably detects drowsiness with high accuracy while maintaining low computational demands. This study offers a strong solution for real-time drowsiness detection, with promising applications in driver monitoring and workplace safety. Future research will investigate incorporating additional physiological and contextual data to further enhance detection accuracy and reliability.
The complexity of strong conflict-free vertex-connection $k$-colorability
Venue: arXiv cs.CC 2024
Year: 2024

We study a new variant of graph coloring by adding a connectivity constraint. A path in a vertex-colored graph is called conflict-free if there is a color that appears exactly once on its vertices. A connected graph $G$ is said to be strongly conflict-free vertex-connection $k$-colorable if $G$ admits a vertex $k$-coloring such that any two distinct vertices of $G$ are connected by a conflict-free $shortest$ path. Among others, we show that deciding whether a given graph is strongly conflict-free vertex-connection $3$-colorable is NP-complete even when restricted to $3$-colorable graphs with diameter $3$, radius $2$ and domination number $3$, and, assuming the Exponential Time Hypothesis (ETH), cannot be solved in $2^{o(n)}$ time on such restricted input graphs with $n$ vertices. This hardness result is quite strong when compared to the ordinary $3$-COLORING problem: it is known that $3$-COLORING is solvable in polynomial time in graphs with bounded domination number, and assuming ETH, cannot be solved in $2^{o(\sqrt{n})}$ time in $n$-vertex graphs with diameter $3$ and radius $2$. On the positive side, we point out that a strong conflict-free vertex-connection coloring with minimum color number of a given split graph or a co-bipartite graph can be computed in polynomial time.
A New Pipeline For Generating Instruction Dataset via RAG and Self Fine-Tuning
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

With the rapid development of large language models in recent years, there has been an increasing demand for domain-specific Agents that can cater to the unique needs of enterprises and organizations. Unlike general models, which strive for broad coverage, these specialized Agents rely on focused datasets tailored to their intended applications. This research proposes a pipeline that leverages the power of LLMs and the Retrieval-Augmented Generation related framework to construct high-quality instruction datasets for fine-tuning on specific domains using custom document collections. By ingesting domain-specific documents, the pipeline generates relevant and contextually appropriate instructions, thus effectively creating a comprehensive dataset for fine-tuning LLMs on the target domain. This approach overcomes the limitations of traditional dataset creation methods, which often rely on manual curation or web-scraping techniques that may introduce noise and irrelevant data. Notably, our pipeline offers a dynamic solution that can quickly adapt to updates or modifications in the domain-specific document collection, eliminating the need for complete retraining. Additionally, it addresses the challenge of data scarcity by enabling the generation of instruction datasets from a limited set of initial documents, rendering it suitable for unpopular or specialized domains where comprehensive datasets are scarce. As a case study, we apply this approach to the domain of psychiatry, a field requiring specialized knowledge and sensitive handling of patient information. The resulting fine-tuned LLM demonstrates showcases the viability of the proposed approach and underscores its potential for widespread adoption across various industries and domains where tailored, accurate, and contextually relevant language models are indispensable.
Spb3DTracker: A Robust LiDAR-Based Person Tracker for Noisy Environment
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Person detection and tracking (PDT) has seen significant advancements with 2D camera-based systems in the autonomous vehicle field, leading to widespread adoption of these algorithms. However, growing privacy concerns have recently emerged as a major issue, prompting a shift towards LiDAR-based PDT as a viable alternative. Within this domain, "Tracking-by-Detection" (TBD) has become a prominent methodology. Despite its effectiveness, LiDAR-based PDT has not yet achieved the same level of performance as camera-based PDT. This paper examines key components of the LiDAR-based PDT framework, including detection post-processing, data association, motion modeling, and lifecycle management. Building upon these insights, we introduce SpbTrack, a robust person tracker designed for diverse environments. Our method achieves superior performance on noisy datasets and state-of-the-art results on KITTI Dataset benchmarks and custom office indoor dataset among LiDAR-based trackers.
HiCCL: A Hierarchical Collective Communication Library
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2024
Year: 2024

HiCCL (Hierarchical Collective Communication Library) addresses the growing complexity and diversity in high-performance network architectures. As GPU systems have envolved into networks of GPUs with different multilevel communication hierarchies, optimizing each collective function for a specific system has become a challenging task. Consequently, many collective libraries struggle to adapt to different hardware and software, especially across systems from different vendors. HiCCL's library design decouples the collective communication logic from network-specific optimizations through a compositional API. The communication logic is composed using multicast, reduction, and fence primitives, which are then factorized for a specified network hieararchy using only point-to-point operations within a level. Finally, striping and pipelining optimizations applied as specified for streamlining the execution. Performance evaluation of HiCCL across four different machines$\unicode{x2014}$two with Nvidia GPUs, one with AMD GPUs, and one with Intel GPUs$\unicode{x2014}$demonstrates an average 17$\times$ higher throughput than the collectives of highly specialized GPU-aware MPI implementations, and competitive throughput with those of vendor-specific libraries (NCCL, RCCL, and OneCCL), while providing portability across all four machines.
Nob-MIAs: Non-biased Membership Inference Attacks Assessment on Large Language Models with Ex-Post Dataset Construction
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2024
Year: 2024

The rise of Large Language Models (LLMs) has triggered legal and ethical concerns, especially regarding the unauthorized use of copyrighted materials in their training datasets. This has led to lawsuits against tech companies accused of using protected content without permission. Membership Inference Attacks (MIAs) aim to detect whether specific documents were used in a given LLM pretraining, but their effectiveness is undermined by biases such as time-shifts and n-gram overlaps. This paper addresses the evaluation of MIAs on LLMs with partially inferable training sets, under the ex-post hypothesis, which acknowledges inherent distributional biases between members and non-members datasets. We propose and validate algorithms to create ``non-biased'' and ``non-classifiable'' datasets for fairer MIA assessment. Experiments using the Gutenberg dataset on OpenLamma and Pythia show that neutralizing known biases alone is insufficient. Our methods produce non-biased ex-post datasets with AUC-ROC scores comparable to those previously obtained on genuinely random datasets, validating our approach. Globally, MIAs yield results close to random, with only one being effective on both random and our datasets, but its performance decreases when bias is removed.